Seven Years, One Lie: My Fiancé's Secret Family

He frowned faintly, unruffled, and looked at me.

"Why are you here?"

A few drops of dirty water slid down from my temple into my collar, and I came back to myself in the shock of it.

"Nathan, I should be asking you that."

A child's sobbing came from outside.

"Daddy…"

Nathan glanced at me and tossed out one line, "Go on back first."

Then he walked away without looking back.

He told the security guards it was a misunderstanding.

The one locked in the restroom wasn't a kidnapper. She was his girlfriend.

Nathan lifted the child out of Imogen Perez's arms.

The onlookers felt even sorrier for Imogen.

Their eyes settled on my face, solid as touch.

That one line of his nailed me to the pillory for good.

As if I, the "girlfriend," were the mistress wrecking the happy life of a family of three.

"Mr. Sanchez, I'm sorry," Imogen said in a small voice.

"Take Beatrice home first."

"I have to apologize to your girlfriend."

Imogen turned to me.

"Miss Cannon."

"Beatrice went missing, and I was frantic. I mistook you for a kidnapper…"

In the mirror I saw Nathan pinch Beatrice's cheek.

"Go home now, baby. Daddy will come be with you later."

"No!" Beatrice said loudly. "I want to sleep with Mommy and Daddy!"

"Beatrice, we can't do that…"

A flush spread across Imogen's face, and she stole a glance at Nathan.

I turned my face and looked at myself in the mirror.

Cracked, dry lips. The side of my face swollen and red.

The guard set my cracked-screen phone on the sink counter.

"We didn't do that to your phone!"

I didn't want to stay a second longer. I picked up the phone and walked out fast.

The floor-to-ceiling glass threw back a lonely figure.

"Olympia."

Nathan came after me.

I turned my still-swollen left cheek away from him.

At the edge of my vision, Nathan pulled off his tie and wound it around his hand.

Deflated, undone.

Seven years ago, when I broke with my family, he'd worn the same look.

"When did it happen?" I asked, watching him steadily.

I wasn't afraid of losing him.

I only wanted to give the girl I'd been for the last seven years an answer.

He kept drawing breath, his lips moving several times, and in the end he said it.

Five years ago he'd been at dinner with a few executives from a partner company.

At the table, one of them got Imogen drunk on purpose.

He wanted to take her up to the executive suite on the floor above.

Nathan couldn't stand by and watch, so he took the unconscious Imogen away.

"Olympia, I swear! It was only that one time!"

He grabbed my hand, desperate.

His tone was exactly like the words he'd said back when I broke with my father, when he knelt outside my family's door.

"Sir, I swear! I'll earn good money! I won't let Olympia suffer with me!"

Seven years.

He had done it, no question.

A watch worth millions, custom suits, a villa in the heart of the city.

His company became one of the biggest taxpayers around.

But all he'd done was make money.

"Olympia, I was wrong."

Nathan closed his hand around my two fingers, the signal we'd agreed on long ago for making up.

"Don't leave me."

"Beatrice is only four. She snuck onto a plane by herself to celebrate my birthday."

"I heard you were the one who picked her up, right?"

"All these years, I've only ever sent her gifts and put money in her New Year's cards."

I lifted my head and looked at him.

"Just responsibility?"

Nathan nodded.

"I'm her biological father. I do my duty by her, and my conscience is clear."

His phone rang all at once.

He held the screen up in front of me.

"It's the driver calling, no one else."

The moment he answered, the driver's frantic voice came through.

"Mr. Sanchez, the little girl's running a high fever and she keeps crying for her daddy…"